Cognitive Psychology: a Meeting of the Mind and Education

Cognitive psychology a meeting of the mind and education To put-on Bruer, cognitive psychology is the critical bridge between brain science and education. A true understanding of how the brain handles learning tasks will only be reached with the help of cognitive psychologists, says John Bruer, PhD, president of the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Over the last decade, Bruer has seen the rise of a brain-based education movement with the media, educational consultants and researchers trying to apply basic brain research to the education of the nations children.In a much cited 1997 article, Education and the brain a bridge too far, published in the Educational Researcher (Vol. 26, No. 8, p. 416), he criticized a inclination to overinterpret the findings of this kind of research and apply it in schools. Holding more immediate promise for application in schools, he believes, atomic number 18 imaging technologies that examine the human brains processing of mathematics, cultivation a nd other specific learning tasks. But even imaging research, he says, must stem from quality cognitive science.Cognitive psychology, says Bruer, can coiffe as the bridge between this type of hard neuroscience and the schools. In a conversation with the Monitor, Bruer, whose background is in philosophy and physics and whose seat funds principally biomedical and behavioral sc iences research, called on psychologists to collaborate more closely with educators as they twist studies of the brain and attempt to apply their findings to education. Q. What acquire been some of the approximately dangerous myths that have been spread through brain-based education?A. matchless is the idea that theres a critical period for school-type learning, an optimal period during brain development that ends at around 11 or 12 old age and after which learning becomes much more difficult. Theres absolutely no basis in neuroscience for that claim. What a plentitude of brain-based consultants dont app reciate is that to turn basic psychological research into effective learning practices you have to develop interventions based on cognitive science in math, reading and other subject aras and test them in classrooms. Q.Who do you think is in a position to do that kind of work? A. Cognitive psychologists. What a dish of people do not realize is that better understanding of brain function relies on improved understanding of learning and behavior. Our understanding of how kind tasks are executed by neural structures in the brain is crucially dependent on cognitive and behavioral research by psychologists. Q. Are imaging studies relying on this kind of behavioral research? A. Totally. To have an interpretable imaging study depends on very careful behavioral study of the experimental task.Our imaging technologies have limited temporal and spatial resolution, so we want to design studies that optimize our ability to look at the smallest parts of the brain that we possibly can. The way to do that is to analyze mental arithmetic, for example, down to its subcomponentsretrieving a number fact, trying to decide which of two numbers is larger. You can begin to see where those subcomponents might be determined in the brain, and from there you can begin to see the circuitry involved in doing these tasks. Q.Do you think that findings from brain research on learning disabilityin math and reading, for examplemight apply more generally to educating children? A. The attempt to understand learning and our mental capacities in terms of brain structures is such a invigorated discipline that if they make advances over the next 50 years as they have over the last 15, who knows? It could be very exciting. But until 10 years ago, most cognitive psychologists did not take any interest in the brain. Brain imaging helped change that.But still, this hybrid discipline, cognitive neuroscience, that attempts to map cognitive mental functions onto brain areas and circuits, is in its infa ncy. We all have great expectations, but its hard to make specific predictions about what the ultimate applications might be. Q. Do you think that, at this point, enough cognitive psychologists are involved in bridging brain research with education? A. Because of the interest in brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience, there are people doing it. But one of the problems is that there arent enough experimental psychologists thinking about applications of psychology to education.Part of that is a sustenance problem. But its been our experience at the foundation that if you make resources available for psychologists to work with educators to do that kind of work, you can elicit some very good proposals. Q. Are you looking more at funding that kind of work? A. Yes. I see an opportunity to work with some cognitive neuroscientists to ask, What educational problems do you think you might be able to clear up because of what you know? I would like to see the foundations interest moving mo re in that direction over the next five to 10 years. Q. Is t a problem that most cognitive psychologists dont have as much experience with education as with science? A. Yes. In most areas theres some friction between researchers and practitioners. It happens to be pretty evident in education. One way to address that is to encourage long-term collaborations between researchers and practitioners, where theyre working together as peers rather than with the scientists sledding into schools and acting as master and educators as their servants. Two things have to happen. The researchers have to become a bit more aware of and sensitive to the problems teachers confront in the classroom.And teachers need to begin to think like researchersto at least understand the importance of experimental controls, evidence, this kind of thing. Q. And how do you get that collaboration going? A. One thing we have found is if you send out a request for proposals that requires the teachers, the practitioner s and the researchers to come in together on a project, they do it. You want to structure funding programs for research and for improving instruction that incorporate the best research thinking and the best practical classroom knowledge.